The Most Important Storage Auction Tool You Can Carry

As you become more and more acquainted with storage auctions and their procedures, you will start noticing certain patterns with the more and more auctions you attend. Certain familiar faces will keep turning up again and again; these are the dedicated auction hunters that make a good portion of their living doing it.

You will also start to watch these veterans and you’ll discover advanced tactics that they employ in order to give themselves a bit of an advantage over other bidders. There are a couple things, you will also begin to notice, that are okay to do when you’re attending a storage unit auction, and there are plenty of other things that are definitely not okay.

One thing that isn’t really spelled out anywhere, but has become sort of a de-facto staple of the auction hunting world is the use of a personal flashlight. When the auction unit in question is first opened up and everyone gets their chance to pass by and glance inside, you will notice that all the auction veterans will shine their flashlights inside the unit, in order to try and see if any big scores are lurking in the dark back there.

Carrying a flashlight to a storage auction is a good idea. It doesn’t have to be anything heavy duty, even a handheld mag lite will help. You will notice many of the more enthusiastic auction hunters carrying big honking handheld floodlights. These can help to illuminate hard to see nooks and crannies, but most of the time they’re excessive. Just make sure you have a powerful enough flashlight so that you can get a quick idea of what’s in the back of the unit.

Whether they do so wittingly or not, many storage companies keep their most prized possessions at the back of the unit. They are thinking that, in case someone breaks into their unit, all the junk in the front should help to slow them down before a manager or police officer can figure out what’s going on and hopefully interrupt the robbery. The idea is that the good stuff should be far in the back so that it takes the thief longer to get to it, and hopefully causes a great deal of noise in the meantime.

What does this mean for self storage auction hunters? Well, although the front of a unit might look pretty beat and unappealing, that doesn’t mean the front is fully representing the entire unit. Although the front section of a storage unit is the most visible, thanks to the light from outside the unit, it doesn’t tell the entire story of the unit, or give you the full storer profile. The fact of the matter is that you might be missing out on the jewelry box that is sitting out on a table in the back of the unit as plain as day, except that it’s in the dark!

Shining your flashlight on a prospective auction unit takes no time at all and it allows you to level the playing field against more prepared and experience auction hunters.